Tales from a dad (Thomas Lionblood), a mom (Bailey Skystaff), and two kids (Amber Deathsong and Kyle Skystaff) playing Wizard101, an MMO from KingsIsle Entertainment

Sunday, September 23, 2012

nvm . . . Dragonspyre, Yer Gearz Don't Matta None

Last weekend I had a pretty humiliating string of defeats against Malistaire with Angus. This weekend? *wipes hands clean* Here's your video proof:

This was Angus's winning deck against Malistaire:

Doesn't seem like much, does it? It's not. It made for a long drawn out hour and 20 minute long fight. (Much different than playing Kyle, my son's storm wizzie, in a full group where the whole thing wraps up in a few rounds LOL)

Here was the basic strategy I had to pull off to win against Malistaire with Angus:

1- The first thing that needed to happen was a lucky two strikes of Insane Bolt treasure cards to take care of two of Malistaire's minions. Why not three Friendly? Hey, it's hard enough getting two lucky strikes of Insane Bolt out in a row as it is! I probably could have pushed my luck and swapped out one of the minion cards for an Insane Bolt card, but knowing the way the Damage flies out of Malistaire, I kind of figured I'd need an extra minion card. And at 2,000 gold a piece, Insane Bolt cards could have made me run into a monetary wall pretty fast.

2- The next thing that NEEDED to happen was to get my storm minion up and taunting, then do my best to dance a line between protecting the minion and taking out Malistaire's final minion. As you can see from the video it was a difficult dance, and though I took out Malistaire's buddy, he also took out mine. Good thing I had a back up minion card, eh? SMARTZ!!1!

3- Treasure card of Darkwind was definitely the most economical way to get a boost to my damage for the entire fight. What you don't see from this video is . . . the failed attempt against Malistaire that happened right before where I made a lame decision to use Supercharge instead of Darkwind and a regular Stormblade and RAN OUT OF MANA! I definitely had to play more economically than say someone sporting 400 mana. Yup.

4- Shield, shield, shield, and shield some more. I cannot say how important it was to cast every single shield in my deck before Reshuffle. The easiest way to play these was to cast all of the 80% Death Shields on myself and all of the 70% death shields from Life School's Legend Shield card on my minion.

5- One more fizzle and a bad roll on the damage output of Triton, and I would have been toast. It was incredibly close and intense, and I liked that. :) It made the victory all the finer. I think Uber Wife was pretty done with me as I screamed at the top of my lungs a few times, NO I FIZZLED! or TAUNT ALREADY! or GET ME SOME CHICKEN! Ok, I never yelled get me some chicken.

So, there you have it. The big long drawn out story of Angus that started out in December of 2010 has finally (sort of) come to a conclusion. Quoting that original post, "He hopes to see you in Celestia . . . with nothing but the robe on his back, hopefully, soloing the majority of the way--no outside help from other characters or anything." For me that's mission accomplished, he's in Celestia.

I HIGHLY doubt Angus will survive too long in Celestia . . . the whole world is one giant gear check with crit gear and enemies beginning fights with a slew of power pips . . . and not to mention the cheating bosses, but HEY, how about those cheating bosses? Although I really was just aiming to beat Dragonspyre, my plan has always been to test out the limits of Moon Magic and Star Magic here since MOST of the Polymorphs have built in statistics like Crit Block and resistance and the Auras are helpful, but I guess time will tell!

And yeah, when you have mobs starting off fights with, say, Fire Dragons and Storm Lords, you really kind od need the health that gear grants you. Otherwise you just won't be able to get shields up in time.

Nice work there friendly old buddy. When your questing in celestia, if you need someone who's knowledgeable about the moon school, then consider looking me up (or at least reading my polymorph analysis on w101c). Good luck in the 2nd story arc worlds.

congrats, Friendly! I hang my head knowing that in the beginning, I doubted Angus could make it past Marleybone. I'm really happy that Angus was a success! I definitely wouldn't have been able to do that.~destiny stormstone

That has got to be the coolest thing I have ever seen. I was biting my nails by the end. How long did it take you to get to the Malistaire fight? Those are some gnarly fights to get past with no gear. Color me impressed forever. You are the true Wiz Master. Beyond well done. Chrissy

@Blessings: Patience is key with Angus. I can't remember, but it wasn't easy. More details on the rest of the journey to Malistaire can be found here: http://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/2012/09/angus-says-ding-49-welcome-to-wall.html -- and the entire Angus story can be found here: http://thefriendlynecromancer.blogspot.com/search/label/angus